Spacecraft
Scouts Scouts: Unmanned – 1 Crew Members. Scouts are small, agile, incredibly fast, but lightly armored and have almost no firepower. They are not used typically in combat unless being deployed by a Missile Frigate to go and find the enemy for long range bombardment. Scouts have very limited anti-fighter capability, and most are unmanned. Scouts always weigh less than a ton. Fighters/Bombers Fighters/Bombers: 1 – 5 Crew Members. Fighters cannot contain FTL drives or Warp Drives, which make it absolutely necessary to have at least a Frigate. Fighters are generally used in “screens” of mass employment as a deterrent to larger vessels. Fighters have such variable weight and size that the possibilities are nearly endless, though most weight from 1 to 5 tons. Most shuttles end up in this category unless they are placed in the Corvette class because of larger loads. There are no Frigate or larger sized shuttles or cargo ships. Corvettes Corvette: 1 – 5 Crew Members. Corvettes are small but expensive ships. Formerly Frigates were the smallest ships that could contain FTL however Corvettes replaced this. While Frigates are self-sustaining, Corvettes took out the additional factories and farms in exchange for still being FTL capable as well as much faster than the normal frigate. Because of their reduced size but still comparably same armor, Corvettes are heavily armored but fast Frigates that can take on almost as many tasks as Frigates even if they are less capable of sustained long-term combat and deep space voyages. Frigates Frigate: 500 – 2,500 Crew Members with the exception of Missile Frigates which have 25 – 100 Crew Members, or Cargo Frigates which have only 5 Crew Members at most. Most Frigates are anywhere between 1 to 5 kilometers long, and weigh in from ranges of 700 to 900 tons. Frigates can provide a wide variety of roles on the battlefield, including in-atmosphere fire support, close contact space engagements at only dozens of kilometers, and more commonly to shoot down large masses of enemy fighters/bombers. Cruisers/Carriers Cruisers: 5,000 – 100,000 Crew Members. Cruisers are heavily armored, though not as much as Dreadnoughts or Capital ships, and have incredibly heavy guns. Typically Cruisers are used to deploy mass amounts of fighters/bombers which gives them a “Carrier” role, but they are used afterwards to engage the enemy at ridiculous ranges as far as several hundreds of kilometers away. Missiles, kinetic slugs, and lasers are almost always found together on Cruisers. Cruisers are expected to be dealing with Frigates and other Cruisers, but have trouble attacking or defending against fighters since Cruisers lack the smaller and faster guns to engage the near light-speed threats. Civilian Colony Ships are included in this category. Capitals/Command Ships Capitol Ships: 1,000,000 – 1,000,000,000 Crew Members. Capitol Ships serve as mobile command posts for massive armies. They are used as a staging platform for ground troops to await their deployment on hostile worlds, and also to carry the biggest guns possible into space warfare. Capitol Ships have a weakness, since they are very slow moving and tend to have a wild inertia, but they also bring the most punch to a fight. Capitol Ships are deadly to all enemy vessels, but are costly to produce and are also unwieldy at best. Mostly, Capitol Ships simply stay away from the fight and either bombard planets from afar, or bombard enemy ships while deploying their ground forces to either board the enemy’s fleet or engage their own ground forces planet side. Stations/Dreadnoughts Dreadnought: 1,000,000,000 – Anywhere Upwards Crew Members. There are only seven Dreadnoughts existing across all races in the universe. Dreadnoughts are the new Cold War, since only one is needed to destroy a planet with a massive bombardment across the surface which causes an extinction event. Mostly, Dreadnoughts have never seen combat with the exception of two cases such as the U.S.S. Liberty Bell and the Immolation, the first being a human vessel and the last a Balalonian. The two were involved in the same battle, and slugged out the massive conflict for years and years as smaller ships engaged all around them. Truly kings of Space, the only tactic with Dreadnoughts seems to be brute force. However, they are far more unwieldy than Capitol Ships, and most are being scrapped due to their inability to be used effectively in maneuvering through battles. That is not to be said that they will never be used, as most as being converted into mobile planets for civilian populations to aid in colonization efforts. Starship Parts for Customization